proprietary

Dennis seemed to feel just great today. He played outside all day. When I returned home from my teacher training around noon, he was wearing a hard hat, one of my old t-shirts tied up in back, and a ripped up pair of blue jeans. He waved me in and announced "welcome to the construction site!". He'd been painting and hammering and shoveling (we are busily trying to finish up the front of the house so we can put on the stones before the weather gets too cold). He decided to play in the dirt in front of the house after I'd been home a while and after asking me "are these okay clothes to wear for playing in the dirt?". I assured him they were and before long he was shouting "I just love a good dirt shower!" as he threw handfuls over himself. I think he had more fun in the dirt than he does in his sandbox! He dug a hole and then went inside to fetch his pirate ship, pirates, and treasure chest. He buried the treasure chest a few times (using a toy front-end loader from the sandbox) before telling me "I really need some gold. Do we have any gold?". I cut up a gold string of Mardi Gras beads and we filled the treasure chest with those, and he buried it and marked it with an x made of driveway gravel. Lemonade came over to help him dig holes and they had great fun burying and digging up pirate treasure.

He had to take a bath pretty much immediately after coming inside, and later, he was playing in his room while I cuddled with Lemonade on our bed. Dennis caught me and said "I'm jealous, Mommy." I asked him if it was because Lemonade is his dog and he replied "no--it's because he's in my spot. I wanted to snuggle with you!". So I we snuggled and talked for a bit and soon he was off to build a "tree-mobile" out of Legos. He came in to show me a contraption that had "two shovels and three axes for cutting down trees."

After he brushed his teeth, he came in to kiss me goodnight and said "I sure am glad my teeth didn't turn into robots. Then they might walk out of my mouth!". Yes, it was another typical Dennis conversation!